Raw Deal (6 page)

Chapter 9

“Le’s go,
pobrecito
.” Gisela Suarez tugged on the leash in her hand, but the dog was unyielding. They were just beneath the window of the silent one, which made her nervous enough, but worse, the animal was rooting in one of her landlord’s flower beds.

She feared that at any moment the
señor
might turn down the street, coming back home from his dinner. The bright security light that normally illuminated the building had apparently burned out, but the headlamps of his car would catch them red-handed and what then?

Señor Deal seemed like a nice man, but he was Anglo and therefore not quite knowable. He did seem to love his flowers, that much she knew. Also, he had allowed a feeble-minded man, who only watched the television and could barely speak, to live in their building. Who could tell what might happen? She could find herself out on the street again.

She had been lucky to find this place. Clean and modern, with even a
microwavio
—which, though she bragged about it at the grocery store, she used for a bread keeper. The rent, though sizable for her tiny pensioner’s income, was more than reasonable. Yes, she had been lucky, she told herself.

Suppressing a shudder, she cast a glance down the block. Hidden in the shadows somewhere was the tiny bungalow that had been her home for thirty-seven years. A Nicaraguan family lived there now, parking their several cars and trucks in what had used to be a neatly tended front yard. She imagined she could hear the throbbing of the music that they played around the clock, even at this distance.

She still owned her home, but she had moved out after someone—a madman, drug addict, who knows what kind of beast—had broken in, ransacked her home, even killed her former dog. Imagine if she had been inside at the time.

She had found herself unable to live there, yet she could not allow fear to drive her entirely from the neighborhood, either. It had been her neighborhood since she had arrived in this country, and it would be hers until she died and joined her departed husband in heaven. So she found herself in this predicament, her only companion now hiking his leg to drown the
señor
’s colorful impatiens.

She laid both hands on the leash then and snatched the dog away while he was off balance. The startled beast left a curving, steaming trail across the sidewalk, but that would take care of itself. The flowers were saved, that was the important thing. She leaned forward, headed up the block.

And still the dog did not want to leave. He dug in his paws, scattering bits of grass as he fought for purchase, whimpering and straining toward the corner of the building. God save her, she thought. This one was incorrigible.

Not like his predecessor, whom she had called Tuti and trained to curl up at the foot of her lonely bed after Oscar had died. Tuti danced in circles on his hind paws for a treat, barked fiercely at anyone who dared to come onto her porch uninvited, and made his business only where he ought.

And where had that gotten Tuti, she found herself thinking.
Madre de Dios
. Such a thought. Poor Tuti. Murdered by an intruder—that enormous
negro
, she thought, it had surely been him—in her own home.

She shuddered again and dragged Tuti’s successor—she hadn’t even named this one, how was that possible—along the sidewalk, mindless of the awful drag of his nails across the concrete, a sound that normally would have set her teeth on edge.

She was about to turn and instruct the dog to make his business there, at the edge of a scruffy vacant lot, when the dog ducked, stretched out his neck like a goose…and slipped backward out of his collar.

Before she could speak, the thing was gone, back toward the apartment in a flash. Mother of angels, she was thinking as she hurried back along the sidewalk.
I will kill him
.…

She broke off, the thought shocking her. She was immediately contrite, rebuking herself for thinking such a thing, never mind it was just a figure of speech, that she had only thought it, really.…

The dog, meantime, tore around the back of the apartment building. It was growling now. And barking wildly. She had never heard such antics. Perhaps it was some nocturnal animal back there, rooting in the garbage cans.

She heard snarls. A loud animal yelp. She was moving as fast as she could, cursing her aging legs.

She was nearly in front of the building when a shadow crossed her path and she caught her breath as she staggered back.

She had only a glimpse of his features beneath the bill of his cap, but that was enough. His skin was yellow, catching the reflection of the streetlamp down the block, his eyes hideous, full of loathing. It was the eyes that made him so…so
ugly
, even though everything about him seemed vile.

He was gone so quickly, vanished into the shadows of a pair of banyan trees that arched over the boulevard there. For a moment she thought she might have imagined him, an evil apparition from the place of nightmares and fear.

Then she remembered the dog and cast a forlorn glance toward the back of the building. There was a lump in her throat as she remembered the yelp…but relief flooded over her as she saw the mongrel round the corner of the building, limping gingerly her way.

Brave one, she found herself thinking as she bent down to cradle the whimpering dog in her arms, felt her own pounding heart over the rapid pulse of the animal. Perhaps this is how she would go, she thought. Like her Oscar, who looked up from his chair after supper one evening with his hand clasped to his chest, an expression of surprise on his face.

“My heart is racing,” he had said to her. And then laid his head on his shoulder and died.

“
Pobrecito
,” she crooned to the dog, who trembled and whined, its gaze fixed now on the forbidding shadows of the huge trees. No, it had not been her imagination.

“Poor little one.” This dog had found a nocturnal beast all right. One of the endless string of prowlers and thieves who preyed upon their neighborhood in these sad days. Yet the dog—
her
dog—had frightened him off. And though the thought shocked her, she found herself hoping he had sunk his teeth into the horrid one’s flesh before he got away.

She stroked the dog’s flanks until he began to calm and she herself felt strong enough to stand.

“We’re not going any farther,” she told him then. “Come on now, you do it here,” and to her surprise, the dog obliged.

“Huh,” she said, casting a last glance toward the shadows behind them. “Maybe we’ll call you Tuti after all?” Though the dog made no reply, she thought she saw some recognition in its doelike eyes, and when she started back toward her apartment, he was trotting smartly at her side.

Chapter 10

The sound of gunshots echoed across the lawn of Deal’s fourplex, followed by the squeal of tires on pavement, then police sirens wailing in the distance.

“There,” Driscoll said. “Tell me you don’t hear that.”

The three of them were on the way up the front sidewalk. Driscoll, still irritable from being awakened, clutched Deal’s arm and pointed at the ground-floor window of Tommy’s apartment. Blue light flickered through the uncurtained glass. There were more shots, and the sounds of a multivehicle car crash.

Deal turned from Janice’s baleful gaze, nodded at Driscoll. “Okay,” he said. “It’s too loud. I’ll talk to him.” He had noticed that the security light was out. That particular type of bulb was going to cost him twenty dollars. On the other hand, he hadn’t spent anything on dinner. Maybe they’d get through the month after all.

Driscoll had stopped, had folded his arms over his chest. Why wasn’t he headed inside for bed? That was where Deal longed to be.

There was an Energizer commercial playing on Tommy’s TV now: “Still going,” the announcer’s voice blared, the thuds of the rabbit’s drum booming over the lawn. Driscoll seemed to be waiting for something.

“
Now
?” Deal asked incredulously. He looked at his watch. “It’s one-thirty. You want me to go banging on his door at one-thirty in the morning?”

“You want to wait ’til two? Hear the goddamned national anthem?” Driscoll fumed.

Deal was trying to think what to say when the clamor inside Tommy’s apartment suddenly stopped.

There was no blue light flickering anymore, no light from the apartment at all. The three of them stared at one another in the silence. A distant glow of streetlamps. Tree frogs. A prop plane grinding somewhere in the distance.

“Sonofabitch,” Driscoll said in amazement. “The set must of melted.”

Maybe, Deal thought. He also thought he could make out Tommy’s silhouette at the dark windows, the poor guy staring out at them, waiting for somebody’s foot to fall. Deal had his arm around Janice, felt the heat of her hip beneath his hand.

“First thing in the morning,” he told Driscoll. “I’ll explain it to him.”

Driscoll glanced around the quiet night. He cut his eyes toward Tommy’s dark apartment, finally sighed and nodded wearily. “I’d appreciate it,” he said. And then they said good night.

***

In his dream, Deal saw Janice rising and falling above him, felt her hands at his face, heard her cries of pleasure as she came, his own orgasm so intense it was almost painful. He found himself thinking,
This is a dream, but it’s just as real as if it really was
…

…she was rolling off the side of the bed then, giving him a smile as she rose to go toward the bathroom, but instead, when she opened the door, it was a brightly lit terrace overlooking some Etruscan landscape, a hillside out there where workers toiled at harvesting grapes, Janice standing in the radiant light, watching. A bell was ringing somewhere. Deal flung his legs out of the bed to join her…

…and then found himself flying, a long cape fluttering back from his neck. Janice was there, too, wearing the same corny Superman costume and cape, and even little Isabel, grown up a bit, her dark curls peeled back from her forehead, her tiny hands spearing through the wash of the wind.

They were soaring over a high desert landscape, the ringing sound fading away in their wake, nothing but rocks and sand below, the heat strangely noticeable, even at altitude. It was a vacation trip, he realized. Daddy’d finally found a way to take them. And everyone was hungry, though there didn’t seem to be a place to stop.

Then, suddenly, a lake came into view—Lake Powell, he thought—and he turned to Janice and Isabel, pointing Daddy-confident down below. Big beautiful fingers of blue water, tall red cliffs…and a marina with a wooden dock, people sitting about a waterfront café.

They banked downward, the three of them, the heat growing more intense as they skimmed the desert floor, abating somewhat as they planed into the water, all of them butt-first, like a family of great big ducks. They were bobbing in the water off the dock of the marina, but now there were no patrons at the tables of the café, no boats, no signs of life at all. And the heat was intense. He smelled the acrid odor of smoke.

This place is burning
, he thought, sitting upright on the water, craning his neck for a better look…

…and found himself struggling awake on his bed.

He shook his head, groggy. He had the sensation the phone had awakened him, but there was only silence in the room. The dream had fled, but there was still the heat.
Something wrong with the air conditioner
, he was thinking, and then he began to cough.

The smoke. The goddamned smoke
. He felt a surge of panic. He turned, found Janice asleep at his side. He shook her, and she mumbled something in her sleep.

“Janice!” He shook her roughly this time. She came awake, blinking.

“Too early. Back to sleep, Deal.”

“Janice, something’s wrong.” He had her by the shoulders now, turning her to face him. His eyes were stinging from the smoke.

“Something’s burning, Janice.”

She stared at him, still vague with sleep. “A fire?” She shook her head, then abruptly her eyes came into focus, as though a switch had been thrown somewhere.

He glanced at their bedroom door. Closed. Christ, what did that mean?
Was
there a fire out there someplace? Or maybe it was just the AC after all. Sure, just the motor burning up. He swung his feet to the floor, trying to get his head clear.

“Isabel!” Janice cried, but Deal had risen, was already at the door.

He ran his hand across the inner surface. Pressed his cheek there. Still cool. He flung the door open, shielding his face. There was a surge of heat and a thick cloud of smoke, but no wall of flame. What had happened to the alarms? They were done to code. He’d installed them, picture of some TV actor on the box, one in every room.

He was coughing again, heard Janice gagging as the thick smoke enveloped her. He fell to his knees and crawled back to the bed. He found her arm, pulled her off the bed, forced her head down close to the carpet where the air was clear.

“Get outside,” he said. “Stay low. I’m going for Isabel. Do you understand?”

“I’m going with you,” she gasped.

He gripped her chin tightly. “
Get…out…side
. I’ll bring Isabel. There isn’t time to argue.”

Finally he felt her nod. He squeezed her arms, then guided her out ahead of him. At the doorway he turned her in the direction of the kitchen, then scrambled quickly down the hallway toward Isabel’s room.

The smoke was blinding now and he had to move by feel. He felt the door to the air handler closet. He’d spent an entire day enlarging that frame, making way for an upgraded unit. The door was cool. Nothing wrong with the air handler.

A few feet down the hall, then: the entrance to the hall bath, open, the marble tiles slick, almost cold beneath his touch. He’d salvaged the stone from a turn-of-the-century bank, bulldozed now, a high-rise in its place.

Next, the spare bedroom on his right, closed. This time the frame was hot. The door skin itself scorched his palm and he pulled back quickly. His computer in there, his business records, a rowing machine he’d never rowed.

He hurried on, trying to breathe, but he was taking only searing lungfuls of smoke now. He felt his head beginning to swim. The building he’d nearly killed himself to build, he thought. Getting its second chance.

Two more crablike lunges and he was at the end of the hallway, the last door on the left, Isabel’s, this one closed too. He reached out, found its surface mercifully cool.

Go ahead. Burn your fucking self down, he thought. Give me five more minutes, burn yourself to hell.

He heaved himself upward for the knob and twisted.

He sensed more than heard the roar at first. It was as if a huge truck or plane were blasting down the hallway at his back. He turned as a great wave of heat and sound swept over him, and then he saw the flames: a solid wall of fire rushing toward him, the smoke disappeared somehow, leaving only the awful flames. In the second it took him to roll into Isabel’s room, get the door slammed behind him, he felt his eyebrows disintegrate in a flash of heat, his lips burst into a blistering mass.

He was vaguely aware of the pain, but he didn’t care about that. He dragged himself across the smoke-thick room, flailing about until he found the slats of her crib.

He gripped the wood, pulled himself up over the railing.
Why isn’t she crying
? he thought, but pushed the thought away. He groped wildly about the bedclothes, his heart hammering, about to burst…then nearly sobbed with gratitude as his hand closed about her tiny foot.

He pulled her up to him, pressed her close, felt the reassuring throb of her heartbeat, the clutch of her sleepy hands. He hugged her once more, and then, though it seemed the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, he eased her back into the crib.

He staggered blindly across the room until his shins cracked against something hard. His hands closed on the arms of the heavy rocker, lifted. He half-slid, half-fell along the wall, then, searching, searching, until he heard glass shatter.

He stepped backward, raised the chair, spun, and threw it with his every ounce of strength. There was a crash and the air was suddenly clear, the smoke lifting as the draft rushed out through the shattered window.

Only seconds left, he was thinking. How long would that paneled door hold up? He gulped down air like a drowning man breaking the surface, then flung himself back to the crib and gathered up Isabel.

She was awake and screaming by now. He held her to his chest, soothing her automatically. Quick, careful steps across the room, eyes on the hallway door that seemed to glow, to sag inward with the force of a giant hand.
Don’t run, Deal. This is the place for you
.…

Out through the broken window frame onto the cool grass, and never mind the glass that cracked and splintered beneath his bare feet. The flames were in her room now, snapping angrily, every stick and shred of cloth incandescent…
come back, Deal
…but they were safe outside.

Safe.
Burn yourself to hell
. He tottered toward the knot of people who had gathered on the lawn, their faces drawn, cast yellow and orange by the glare of the flaming building behind him.

There were sirens, he realized. A fire marshal’s sedan bouncing crazily up over the curb, a pumper truck lumbering just behind it.

He saw Tommy on the sidewalk. Slack-jawed Tommy staring dully at the flames. Then Driscoll’s face swam up out of the crowd; he saw the big man break into a run.

“Jesus God,” Driscoll said. He stopped short, his expression shocked. Deal wondered what he was staring at. “Your face,” Driscoll said.

“Janice?” Deal asked him. His face felt…his face felt strange…but fine.

Driscoll stared at him blankly, shook his head, glanced behind him helplessly. Mrs. Suarez was there now, a blanket slung about her shoulders. Tears were streaming down her face, but she spoke firmly, as if Deal were a child. “Give me the baby,” she said. “I will take care of the baby.”

Deal was feeling light-headed again. He felt Mrs. Suarez lift Isabel from his arms.

“Where’s Janice?” he cried again, but Driscoll could only shake his head. He held a hand toward Deal but seemed afraid to touch him.

Deal searched the faces lined by the curb, saw the fire marshal hurrying toward him. Driscoll finally reached to take hold of him, but Deal turned away, back toward the flaming building. He began to stagger forward, oblivious to the heat.

“Janice,” he screamed. Had he willed this place to burn?

He was running toward the building now. “Janice!”

He sensed someone beside him, turned to see Tommy, lumbering Tommy, joining him in a dash toward the flames. Tommy’s mouth was open, his face streaked with tears. He was screaming too, crying out something unintelligible.

“Janice,” Deal screamed again.

Then Tommy’s anguished bellow. Tommy outrunning him, now out ahead, his arm thrown up against the heat.

“Janice,” Deal cried again. His head was spinning. He prayed it was a nightmare. But the pain. The heat. Tommy and he running toward the flames. Then he felt himself going down.

***

“Hey, pardner.”

Deal heard the voice as if from another planet. Driscoll out there somewhere, calling Deal back to life.

He tried to blink himself awake, out of the darkness, but his eyes stayed stubbornly closed. He tried to raise his hands to his face, but something held him motionless.

“Take it easy, pardner.” Deal felt a hand on his shoulder. Driscoll calming him down. “They got you all tied down. They don’t want you hurting yourself.”

Deal saw the flames again, dancing wildly behind his sightless eyes. He thrashed against the restraints that held him, ignoring the pain that seemed to double, then double again, with every movement.

“Nurse,” he heard Driscoll calling. “Get somebody in here. Now!”

Deal felt one hand come free, raised it to his face. Bandages on more bandages. It felt like he was pawing at a pumpkin with a boxing glove. Except for the pain. No blood in his veins. Just shoots of pain that surged beneath the bandages on his face and hands with every beat of his pulse.

He felt his mouth working sluggishly beneath rasping cloth, felt Driscoll’s thick hand at his wrist, heard him yelling at someone—“Hurry it up, for Christ’s sake!”—felt something sharp prick the skin on his arm.

He flung his head back and forth, caught bandages in his teeth, tore at them. “Janice,” he said, or tried to. “Janice.”

He was sliding down a cool, slippery tunnel now, a thick, soothing mist blanketing the fire on his face, his hands. He heard Janice’s name echoing down the length of the long black passageway. And then he heard Driscoll’s rough voice in his ear, trying to be reassuring. “She’s okay, Deal. She’s going to be fine.”

***

When Deal opened his eyes again, it was dark, but this time it was darkness of a different quality. He blinked again, just to be sure he wasn’t dreaming. Light filtered into the room from a hallway lamp somewhere. Driscoll was slumped in a sleeper chair at the foot of his bed, his snores rattling off the concrete walls of the hospital room. Beside him in a metal desk chair sat Homer, his head thrown back and his mouth open. He might have been snoring too, but with Driscoll’s racket, it was impossible to tell. A ventriloquist and his dummy, Deal thought, as Homer began to stir.